I’m currently reading A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn, and chapters 2 and 3 are all about the strategies those in power used to make sure there were no big uprisings. A lot of it involved making sure African slaves, Native Americans, and poor whites (including indentured servants) didn’t talk with the other groups too much, or if they did, that they hated each other.

There are direct quotes from people like South Carolina Governor Lyttletown, who wrote in 1738, “It has allways been the policy of this government to create an aversion in them [Indians] to Negroes.” This was all strategic and there is evidence straight from the mouths of the oppressors.

The whole time I was reading these chapters, I had Kanye and his idiocy in the back of my head. That man needs to read what these rich assholes were admitting to. Then he’ll see why slaves didn’t/couldn’t rebel. Chose to be slaves my ass.

The Right has spent that last half century dismantling unions and undermining labor rights from the culture up. We once had very strong unions and a culture of solidarity. Unions have literally gone to war against US troops in order to secure basic things we take for granted now, like weekends. Now, Reagan’s “rugged individuality” has eroded our sense of community and unity, turning neighbors against one another in needless competition for artificially limited resources rather than standing together to advocate for a modern economic standard of living.

It's another example of how the powers at be are dividing us. Someone says something about conservatives and if you identify as a conservative you'll get defensive. Then the argument become right vs left and the merit of what is actually being discussed is forgotten. The right? The left? Fuck em both, they both suck and you shouldn't feel like you have to lean one way or the other. Because then you're taking a side before the discussion even begins. People cannot fight their oppressors if they are too busy fighting themselves.

It has to be approved in advance, but US has this culture of frowning upon using your vacation days. While Europeans take 25-35 days off a year depending on country, Americans take 17 days. There is this mindset of believing that if you use your vacation days, you are not as committed to your job as you should be. This results in offices where employees don't take days off and they look down upon others who do, which then makes them feel guilty for taking days off and they end up not taking their days off later on. Americans are actually taking less days off than they used to. Between 1978-2000 workers took on average 20 days off. The 17 is the highest it has been in seven years and it's depressing to imagine how the lowest was.

Europeans largely don't have this kind of atmosphere. The places I've worked at have actually pushed me into taking my vacation days because for June-July business is so much more slower because everyone else is vacationing as well. The offices don't need to be fully staffed and the employers would rather pay us for vacationing rather than pay us for being less productive and letting us stack up on our vacation days.

This is all entirely dependent on your employer. I’ve been at multiple places where there’s no shame at all in asking for time off. I wouldn’t lump this all together as an indictment of American labor culture.

Obviously it depends on the employer. The average wouldn't be as high as 17 days if people didn't take time off. It's still significant enough to show a difference in culture. It's not universal, but it exists.

I get 0 days of paid time off. I get paid sick hours only because the government requires it. If I am literally vomiting in bed, I am still expected to find someone to cover my shift. This is the experience of most food service employees I have talked to.

I used to work for an Asian company in the US. They didn’t have PTO and you can only have 3 days sick leave every year. They recently started giving people PTO cause someone tried to sue them and so the labor department started snooping around the company and apparently they were violating some labor laws thus making changes including that PTO

Many of us don't even get that. Many of us get none as there's no mandatory minimum paid time off in the U.S., for vacation, national holidays, or anything else. Where I work, you don't get the privilege of being sick for 5 days in a year until you have worked there for 25 years straight.

The number is typically three in a row, plus any number your doc signs off. You need to be sick for literally months at a time before your employer gets to stop paying you, at which point health insurance takes over paying you, though at a reduced rate.

As for requesting in advance, any place I've worked at only did that so they could plan a schedule. So long as you didn't mess that up to the point of being unfixable short notice wasn't an issue, though advance was preferred.

No mate we don't have sick days as a fixed number. You're sick you get off that's that. Other than that I'm sitting my 25 days off + overtime compensation days etc whenever I want to. It's called a request but they cannot deny my request so...

No they didn’t, because the way modern European states came into being is nothing at all like the way the US came to be. The United States was founded. As 13 different colonies, yes, but they were intentionally set up. It took 1000 to 1500 years after the fall of the Roman Empire for European states to exist as we know them. The lines on the map moved back and forth constantly. Europe wasn’t so much a bunch of nation states as it was a bunch individuals and families with personal holdings. National identity is a very recent concept, relatively speaking, and honest to god governments aren’t a whole hell of a lot older.

The plantation style of slavery the US had was not something Europe had in Europe for many many hundreds of years. Their version of coerced labor was the feudal system of serfs and it took a lot of bloodshed, revolutions, invasions, and wars for the feudal system to die out. People with a lot more historical training than me could better inform you but i hope I’ve given you enough info to seek them out yourself.

Yup. Coworker is a shit employee, like literally runs errands because the manager doesn’t trust him for shit but he doesn’t want to fire him because he doesn’t want to be “a bad guy.” Like dude, he’s fucking up MY work routine to do the shit he should be doing.

This is true like 90% of the time. There are a shocking amount of people for whom being unhappy, complaining, gossiping and being generally toxic are tied up with their sense of self. They don’t know how to be happy at work and just run around trying to find people to blame for it. I personally think it’s because they are afraid to give it their all and then fail - so they self sabotage and blame others to save face. If they actually try and fail they’d have to look at themselves in the mirror and it’s scary. But that’s just my theory. Getting these people to change is really, really hard - and they keep moving the goalposts on what it takes to be happy at work. It’s never enough.

A job I had a few years ago required 90 days notice to take a day off. My “manager” threw a huge pissy fit when I told her I needed to leave early on a Friday coming up for my brother’s rehearsal dinner. She said she’d let me do it but I need to plan better in the future.

I eat the overtime hit. Over the course of the year it’s cheaper than the cost of attrition. Plus, I don’t have to carry the administrative burden of having to write people up for attendance - nor do I have to grapple with a bunch of bitter employees trying to drag everyone else down. It’s easier, cheaper, and better for employees. Win win win.

That’s just smart management. You want people to care about you, you’ve gotta show them that you care about them. Not to mention that people tend to be a lot happier in general when they can go and enjoy the stuff they were spending all this time working in order to be able to do.

I know. That’s why I do it how I do it. Had a manager deny my time off for my wedding. I had to tell them “call it what you want I’m not gonna be here. If that’s a problem I quit”. Not gonna do my team like that.

I had to deny my first vacation request ever and I still feel like shit about it. Its a three person department and they asked for vacation right when I’m scheduled to give birth. I’m still wracking my brain trying to figured out how to make it work but we’d just be completely at a loss to deal with any projects with just one person on duty.

This is what too many employers don't get. If you wanna run a skeleton crew all the time to save on labor costs then eventually something is going to happen, shit isn't going to get done and it isn't your employees fault.

I had a boss like that who would schedule me anyway on approved days off and tell me too bad. Sometimes, he would change my schedule after the schedule was approved and be upset I didn’t read his mind and come in on a day I thought I had off. It was miserable and I was highly stressed. It actually took me 2 years to quit that place...

If you position yourself well in a company and making yourself hard to replace, it’ll cost the company more to fire you. Plus it’s not 1980, people nowadays are more eager to venture out and look for different jobs than being pigeon holed into one job.

Also just give at least like 70% at any given time. As an ex retail manager, i know you aren't fucking living to fold clothes, but if you just stay consistent, you are probably doing better than your coworkers. 70% effort, show up on time, you can pretty much do whatever the hell you want as long as it won't get me in trouble.

Fuck yeah man. You’re a good manager I can tell. it’s retail. There’s gonna be some fucking off. That’s the only way to even keep doing the shit job day in and day out. I actually really liked retail when my managers respected our abilities to be lazy and still get everything done.

So it’s nice you’re not one of those “time to lean, time to clean” types. You’d be great to work for I bet.

At my old job we had changed to a new scheduling system. It only had a rolling two week schedule, but I very quickly found out you could request much much further in the future off. So guess who was first in line for every major holiday and Black Friday for three years? This guy.

Big companies are the worst for this. "Oh, if we fire Bob here, who has 20 years of experience and costs us $100k a year, we can replace him with Joe who has 2 years' experience and costs $40k a year! The math is obvious!"

Two weeks later: "Why do we have to hire an external contractor at $1 mil to fix what went wrong?"

"...Because Bob was the only guy who really knew how the system worked and could have prevented us this cost, but YOU FIRED HIM FOR BEING TOO EXPENSIVE."

Most places have stuff like this to prevent your entire team from taking off. You can’t ALL be off: bobs taking his honeymoon that week (planned for a year), Susan just had emergency surgery, but you need time off for a Dr appointment you scheduled a week ago? Eh.

Don’t get me wrong, there should be a very understandable reason for an employer denying time off, but I get why it happens

I had to fight tooth and nail to be able to take 5 days off in a row without any of my bosses fucking with my weekend on either side. After months of pushing I finally get my vacation, then suddenly half the crew is taking a week off at a time, because my boss is telling them to, to burn through PTO.

So you make it next to impossible for me to do it, feed me sob stories over how much itll mess you up to give me 5 days off, but then everyone is encouraged to do that immediately after I do? Then I ask for a meeting to sit down and discuss a few things and am told to wait a few months, as that's when raises would be discussed.

Found a new job and gave my 2 weeks to my boss just under 48 hours after being told to wait a few months. She seemed flabbergasted. I just said I wanted to discuss how I was being treated as well as compensated. I tried to talk to you about it, you denied to meet with me. So I found someone else willing to listen.

I have 12 people on schedule. We can rotate 4 people off per day. People seem to respect each other and make sure no one abuses the system and people get the day off they need but we are closed all major holidays which helps.

I had to work the day of my rehearsal dinner, the day before my wedding, and the Monday after. My husband and I were moving across country (and I would continue to work for my company from a satellite office) and leaving that Wednesday to arrive by Friday.

I had 2 weeks worth of vacation saved, and told them about these plans 6 months in advance, but because my manager had already scheduled a month off for a family wedding in Europe at that same time, they were hesitant to give me any time off. I had to plead with them to have a day for packing and unpacking (Tuesday and Friday), and not be expected to put my laptop on a WiFi hotspot during the 14 hour drive. I talked them down to responding to email each night, and checking when I could on the drive - still spending my vacation days.

There was nothing so urgent that they needed me on my computer and able to respond at a moment's notice. Had me stressed for no reason other than to show me my place.

Is it bad that I deliberately chose to open when I worked at Starbucks so I could take whenever I wanted off?

Like, yeah, I'll open this store 250+ days out of the year, but if I tell you that I'm taking a vacation what are you going to do? That store had a hard enough time hiring as it was, let alone trying to fill a 4AM opener shift.

Sometimes I felt bad, but like... Hey, got to visit family for holidays, go on family vacations, whatever.

Same, even if I submit a time off request a month or two in advance it’s like i’m screwing my boss over. And to top it off he cut the vacation days in half and banned us from using them in November and December.

Anytime I tried to do it that far in advance my boss would tell me to just wait. I’d try and try and he would just ignore any mention of it and then a few weeks before his boss would get upset with me for waiting til it was so close to request it off. Every single time this happens, tried sending requests straight to his boss to avoid it and got yelled at for not going through the proper channels. This is one of the reasons I’m lookin for a new job.

Haha. I had a co-worker go to our boss with a vacation form and say “Can I take these days off?” I said, “That’s not what you do. You say, ‘I need you to sign this.’” Which she then said, and my boss replied “I don’t like this...”

One time I requested a week off to get my wisdom teeth removed and the amount of time off was recommended by my dentist. I absolutely needed to get them removed due to decay from being too difficult to brush. I requested it a month and a half in advance. Well my boss came to me 1 week beforehand to tell me that two people higher up than me requested those days off in the past week for vacation. That's right, my own health was pushed aside for some stupid vacations. And the week after, one of them came back and said they spent the week sitting at home watching tv. WTF??? And guess who still doesn't have their wisdom teeth out 6 months later lol

Yes but ‘good reason’ can be made-up-on-the-spot bullshit. “Underperforming” “not a good fit for company culture” not to mention managers can accuse anyone of anything and have them fired with no proof.

You can often tell that they’re gonna fire you because you’ll suddenly start getting write ups when you’ve never had one before. It will be over bullshit reasons, often rules that are technically in the handbook but they don’t really enforce. I swear they keep those rules for that reason.

After a bit of getting these nonsense write ups, you’ll get canned. It will be related to the write ups in some way, usually underperforming or insubordination or inability to train and adapt.

Well sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do, its the principal of the matter. Your trading your time and work for money. Employees don’t owe their boss or company anything and vice versa. Anyone who says otherwise is a bootlicker.

We do, but many companies strictly track their employees use of annual leave and will punish employees for not helping them do it. Things like putting a request to use your annual leave in writing and have it logged somewhere, as much ahead of time as possible.

It does somewhat serve a purpose in that they want to make sure an entire team or department isn’t taking time off all at once and creating work stoppages. But it’s also because HR departments treat their employees like untrustworthy children.

Your annual leave is your time, they cannot stop you from using it and if they fire you that's an easy win with a unfair dismissal claim. No one should be afraid or feel guilty for taking their annual leave.

Ugh I hate this. My work has "unlimited" PTO but "suggested" 2 weeks/year.

It's especially frustrating if they're like "You can take as much vacation as you want, as long as you get your work done!" But it's not like I get assigned a bunch of stuff in the beginning of the month that has to be done by the end of the month. Every day has new tasks and new deadlines. If I leave for a week somebody else has to be picking up at least some of the work I'd be doing in that time...

It depends on your job, really. I get annual leave approved whenever I ask for it, but if I were to schedule annual leave around a time when there's something critical due to happen, my boss obviously won't approve it, and if I don't show up, I'd get (rightfully) fired.

Some companies punish employees for using leave time. It's against the law for them to do so, but no one in government holds corporations responsible in America. With no real social safety net to speak of, most Americans have no choice but to take it.

Everyone notices that Americans overeat. This is part of WHY. Most of the country is under constant threat of losing everything they have with one bad roll of the dice (health, work, school debt, etc) and we have no way to fight back. It's why the fascists found common ground with the corporatism-at-all-costs Republicans and the religious right: if we can't fight back, they can do as they please.

It depends what kind of work you do. Lots of salaried employees get paid time off yes, but since the US is more and more becoming a services based economy, most people dont have those benefits. I havent ever had "vacation time" in my 15+ years of full time employment.

I used to work a job that would try to tell us to find coverage when we'd schedule a day off, even if it was weeks in advance. Like, you could just not schedule me that day...

It's funny because that place became my absolute favorite job once I turned in my notice. I had to come in late one morning so I called the night before to let them know. The manager told me I need to find coverage. I told him sounds like I just did and hung up the phone.

My old grocery store manager did the same thing. It was one of the most important TO requests of my life. Missing that appointment was not an option.

The guy scheduled me anyway. I was so outraged I approached him directly before the appointment and confronted him about how I reminded him repeatedly about how important it was for him not to put me on the schedule on this day.

He avoided eye contact, tried to walk past me several times, and just keep chirping "Uh huh. Yeah. Ok. Uh huh. Yeah. Ok." I was more shocked than mad.

I worked front desk at a hotel once, and before I even got the job I let them know I had a wedding to go to in July with plane tickets already booked (this is April). We get a new head manager in late June, he notices on the schedule two weeks ahead that I’m off. He calls me into his office and asks what the time off was for, I tell him a wedding I have plane tickets for, he says “how could you book plane tickets if you aren’t sure you’re getting the days off yet?” I said “i let the manager before you know about this trip in my interview, I mean I’m going either way so I hope you consider giving me the days off” He lasted maybe 3 months. Terrible manager.

I got hired at a retail job one September. Told the assistant manager who signed me on that I'd be gone the whole week of Thanksgiving, but would be available all around Christmas. No problem. Cue November 1st, the head manager tells me that no one can request off for Black Friday. I will be scheduled, I need to be there, or I will be fired. She called me a liar when I said this came up, and was resolved, during my interview.

I offered her three weeks' notice, with my last day being the one before my flight. It seemed like the only respectful way to avoid being fired. A week later she told me to take the time off and not quit, as they needed as many people as possible in December, specifically the week of Christmas....

Fuck all of that noise. I live so far from my family that every minute with them is precious. It's easy to find another garbage job at minimum wage, especially that time of year.

I was pretty lucky with my last job. It's a floral and events shop so while vacation was almost always accepted without issue...sometimes if we had a particularly hectic period with like...12 weddings in 3 days (it happened like 2-3 times a year) then the owner would come and see if you could postpone your time off. Depending on the vacation, like if you'd paid for a trip to Europe or something, then you'd get off anyway. But like a "staycation" they'd tell you to wait a few days.

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It was nice having a line of mutual respect between employees and owners. You don't leave them high and dry and they let you off when you want otherwise.

I worked at this terrible place before. I would schedule vacation time. Someone would inevitably call me a few days before (I’d be off at 3 and they would call around 6PM) saying my coverage isn’t able to cover anymore and I might have to come in. I just told them no.

Then, I would call in sick, I’d be throwing up, whatever, and they’d still say: ok we’ll call for coverage and then call you back to let you know if you can take the day off. (If you were dumb enough to show up sick the manager would lose his mind and send you home publicly shaming you, asking: who will I have working for me after you infect them all? I’d just stay home and ignore their calls. Then I’d log in our logbook: I called in sick at :, not sure what the confusion is.)

And lastly, I called in once with pneumonia. Could barely talk, so short of breath, and the jackass on the line was like: are you going to call around for coverage or do you want me to? I just clicked End on my phone. Next time I saw him he was all smiles with this loud ass voice: “hey buddy I got someone to cover for you!” Like he did me some life altering favour.

Had a job like this once. Also got pneumonia. Lost 5kgs in a week. Came back to 9 days straight in the roster. Asked what was going on, got told "people had to spend their weekend covering you, now you have to cover them". Still weak as a kitten I quit on the spot.

My favorite story regarding this was that I once got fired from a job just for REQUESTING a day off (unpaid, mind you) about a week in advance because my college finals schedule was all wonky and conflicted with work for one day. I came in the next day and was immediately escorted out the door. I'd never missed a shift at this job either.

I currently work at a job where PTO is blacked out for roughly 4 months out of the year...I guess it's an improvement though?

My section at work continues to shrink while people find new opportunities and the higher ups decide not to fill their positions.

When I started there were 5 of us. Now we’re down to 2 + a part time person. My buddy told me he’s probably retiring in 1.5 yrs so I should get ready.

I look forward to telling my bosses “oh yea, I’m doing that annual overseas trip again.” And there response of “how do you hope to cover your office” to which I’ll reply, “not really my problem since y’all decided not to fill open positions, is it?”

Due to the nature of the industry my company operates in, no one can take vacation in april. April is a blackout month. That is the only blackout time (medical things excluded) and new hires are informed of this when they interview. Vacation any other time is not rejected. I feel like that is reasonable policy.

Every year there is at least someone who tries to do it and gets pissy when it is rejected/claims they already bought tickets to something.

This is honestly something that pisses me off. Why offer vacation/sick days if it’s such a big deal for you to take them. Even if I’m sick and I let my boss know the day before that I won’t be in I still get the “well it’s not going to be good for production” yadda, yadda. WHY DO WE HAVE IT THEN? Should I come in and make everyone sick?

I usually just send my boss an email to tell him I'm sick and can't come in to work today, Ill let you know when I can return. Then I don't check my email anymore. You cant deny something that wasn't a request.

I have earned time where I’m at. There are rules surrounding how it can be used (annual leave has to be scheduled in advance, for example, and if you’re staff you have to have earned time available to take off, or have unpaid approved under FMLA). I’ve never had issues with getting requests approved. I still have mild anxiety about taking time off but I really should get over it; it’s my time and I can use it whenever I want. I’m in a call center and the work is the same for everyone in my position; there’s no “covering” that needs done. So as long as you have the time and you’re submitting it according to the rules then nothing else matters; it’s just okay, see you tomorrow...or next week...or next month.

Requested 3 days off for court an exact month before I needed the time off. Two days before I’m supposed to leave they try and get me to stay because other people have requested time off after me and they’d been there longer. “Can’t they reschedule the court date?” No, they can’t and I wouldn’t ask them to.

My ex boss once told me that he had to approve my vacation before I could take it. I told him that if I put in for it he had better plan on me not being there no matter what. He was not happy about that.